7 Face Srebrenica Tribunal in Largest Group Trial at The Hague

By MARLISE SIMONS

Published: July 15, 2006

They lined up in the courtroom dock on Friday morning, seven men, once officers in the Bosnian Serb forces, now having to account for their presence at Srebrenica, a place of cold-blooded killing in July 1995.

Taking their seats behind a phalanx of defense lawyers, they were flanked by United Nations guards. A panel of four international judges faced a courtroom that had never been this packed. It is the largest group trial in the history of the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Five of the accused are facing charges of genocide, the highest crime. The trial will focus on their role during Europe's worst massacre since World War II. Srebrenica was a United Nations haven in Bosnia, but nearly 8,000 unarmed men and boys were systematically killed there. Almost 60 mass graves have been found in the area.

The main architects of the killings, Gen. Ratko Mladic and the political leader Radovan Karadzic, have evaded capture for a decade. But some men in the dock were part of their inner circle as commanders of army and police forces that overran the safe haven and its peacekeepers.

The trial follows months of preparations, including strong objections by several defense lawyers over trying such a large group at once. Managing the proceedings, which involve more than two dozen defense lawyers and prosecutors and deal with such serious charges, is seen as an enormous task for the court.

But prosecutors, led by Carla Del Ponte, have argued that trying the men together will avoid duplication, minimize hardship for victims and witnesses and ensure consistency in weighing crimes committed during the same campaign.

A similar large-scale trial, involving six senior Serbian military officers and politicians accused of crimes from the 1999 war in Kosovo, opened at the court on Monday to examine the charges of persecution and deportation of up to 800,000 of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians.

The tribunal, dealing with war crimes in the former Yugoslavia dating to the 1990's, has been under international pressure to finish its case load and close its doors before 2010.

The five men now facing genocide charges are Col. Ljubisa Beara, a chief of security for the Bosnian Serb Army; Ljubomir Borovcanin, a deputy commander for the Bosnian Serb special police; Vinko Pandurevic, the commander of the brigade that led the attack on Srebrenica; Drago Nikolic, the brigade's chief of security; and Lt. Col. Vujadin Popovic, an officer accused of being responsible for managing the military police.

The two other suspects, Radivoj Miletic and Gen. Milan Gvero, are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including blocking aid and supplies to the tens of thousands of refugees in Srebrenica.

A verdict in this trial, which is being broadcast over the Internet and is expected to last more than a year, may become the most far-reaching judgment involving Srebrenica if General Mladic and Mr. Karadzic are not delivered to the court.

Much of what happened at Srebrenica -- the killings and the deportations of the Bosnian Muslim population -- has been tested in court. Lengthy evidence was presented during two trials of three high-ranking officers who are now serving long sentences. Three other men, two senior officers and a soldier in a firing squad, pleaded guilty and provided detailed testimony.

Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian president, was also charged with genocide related to killings in Bosnia by the Serb-backed forces. But his death in March abruptly ended his trial, leaving a wide range of crimes committed during his tenure without a verdict.